The Kitchen God Series

If the kitchen is the center of a home, what stories will it tell about things that are only said within its privacy? And what is left unspoken that only the kitchen gods, supposedly all-knowing figures, know?

In Vietnamese popular mythology, every family is said to have three kitchen gods that reside in their house. Their altars are typically placed by the stove so they can always watch over to ensure family members treat each other well and all matters of the home are in order.

Growing up in Vietnam but having lived away from home and family for a decade, I began unpacking traditions and rituals, especially those around food, as performance to understand how they fit into my own life.

Taken out of its original context, traditions inherently become open to interpretation. These staged images, taken in the homes of Vietnamese people across New York, explore home-making through the articulation of cultural traditions in new contexts.

The Kitchen God Series uses the imaginative landscape of myth to explore the confines of identity through the exchange of reality and fiction, of shared beliefs and personal history. 

What would a kitchen god see if they could look into our lives?